1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and system for facilitating health care decisions related to health issues, and in particular to a method and system for providing information showing the relationship between the risk and the benefit of clinical therapies and/or applications with respect to medical ailments, diseases and/or conditions.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the bio-medical industry advances in their findings and research of various ways to treat or attend to health issues, health care providers, payors, employers, health care delivery systems, regulators, the government, as well as patients, are exposed to an increased amount of clinical applications and regimens, based on various drug therapies, for example. Often times, clinicians are pressed to provide information, education and guidance to their patients in very brief clinical encounters, resulting in patients that are unable to understand the technical language of their clinicians, unable to absorb and retain all the information provided to them, or unable to grasp certain key concepts during these brief encounters. Consequently, patients are not properly educated or informed about the clinical applications or therapies under which they are placed. As a result, very often the patients do not adhere to the application or therapy they have been prescribed to follow or are unable to understand the information with which they have been presented.
Studies have shown that a patient well-informed about the health risks and benefits associated with the patient's therapy has significantly better adherence to the recommended therapies or regimens. In particular, a patient's adherence to a recommended therapy often depends upon the patient having an understanding of the benefits to the patient's health and life span under such recommended therapy, and the potential risks of declining health or shortened life span if the patient were not to follow such recommended therapy. As such, patients are in need of information that can empower them to better adhere to their recommended therapies and regimens.
On the flip side, clinicians are also seeking more efficient ways to communicate concepts to patients in a way that informs and motivates them to take responsibility for their health and adhere to recommended therapies. For example, clinicians often provide medical pamphlets or articles to their patents, but these documents are often discarded or ignored by the patients, which renders them useless. Also, research organizations are constantly struggling to find effective ways of communicating their researched data and studies regarding the benefit and risk of a certain recommended therapy or regimen to all of their key constituencies, such as clinicians, patients, managed health care companies, and regulators, and existing efforts are typically ineffective.
The Internet is generally a source of vast information. However, the endless volumes of information available on the Internet from a variety of sources of varying credibility can deter, rather than encourage the patient to find helpful information. For instance, the large volumes can overwhelm the patient searching for very specific information. Furthermore, the volumes of information available on the Internet are often technically complex and not easily understood by a lay person, such as a patient, or the information may lack consistency or validity from one source to another. Therefore, the information on the Internet is not always helpful to the patient.
While there is some evidence that intensive multi-modal interventions will improve compliance with prescribed courses of therapy, success often varies according to the impact of the medication on the disease symptoms. This has led the World Health Organization, among others, to conclude that there is no single intervention strategy, or even combination of strategies, that has been shown to be effective across all patients, conditions, and settings. As such, there exists a need for methods and systems that provide patient- and condition-specific information during the course of treatment.
Additionally, many patients feel overwhelmed by the amount of information available and the format by which that information is presented. The use of visual information can increase the impact and effectiveness of information production. Visual information provides context, can be processed quickly, and overcomes issues in numeracy and literacy. Further, many people process and retain visually-presented information more efficiently.
Studies have shown that present methods for delivering information to facilitate clinical decisions are insufficient. For example, package inserts refer to side effects in such categories as “very common,” “common,” “uncommon,” “rare,” and “very rare,” while seemingly straightforward, are misinterpreted by margins of up to 50% of their actual indication of risk level.
In view of the above, there is a need for a method and system for providing information to facilitate clinical decisions, for example, by showing the relationship between the risk and the benefit of any clinical therapies or applications with respect to medical ailments, diseases and conditions. Further, there exists a need for methods and systems of presenting that information visually, providing maximum impact and ease of understanding.